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three metres by two. The sand kept sliding in, but once we were down to a reasonable depth we built walls of bags filled with sand, then laid poles across the top and covered them with thermal sheeting and sand-spattered hessian. At the front we left a slot for observation, camouflaged with strips of hessian like a net curtain, and a small aperture at the back, concealed by a flap of hessian covered in sand and glue. The main object of the exercise was to work out what we would need to go to ground in Iraq, and the answer seemed to be plenty of sandbags and plenty of water. At the end of the day we all went round each other's OPs, and I am glad to say that ours was by far the best. Encouraged by the nature of the desert in the south of the Gulf, we decided that to build an OP in Iraq would be a viable proposition, and that we should be able to get away with it. Each patrol's plan, in fact, was to put in two OPs, one covering the other, 50 or 100 metres apart and linked by telephone line. One would have an observation opening facing forward on to the MSR, and the other would be in front of it with the opening facing backwards, so that the guys there could watch the ground behind their colleagues. It was when we started getting our kit together that the scale of the shortages finally emerged. 'Right,' we said to the SQMS, 'we need 203 rounds.' `Well,' he replied, 'we haven't got any.' `Why the hell not?' `There are just none here.' In that case, I decided, I wasn't going to carry the gre�nade-launching part of my weapon across the border, because it made the whole thing so heavy. The launcher, or lower barrel, is easily detached, and without it the rifle becomes considerably lighter and a joy to handle � but in that mode it needs a replacement stock, since the main stock comes away with the lower barrel. The SQMS told me I 20The One That Got Away couldn't split my weapon, because he had forgotten to bring out the extra stocks. In fact there were plenty of 203 rounds � but other people had them. One day I went across to see two friends in 'A' Squadron and found them sitting in their Pinkie. They were just about to move up to Al Jouf, within striking distance of the border. I said, 'Listen � we're flying up tomorrow, just after you. Is there any chance of you giving us some bombs?' John � Sarah's godfather � lifted up the seat, and under�neath were boxes of 203 rounds. They brought out twelve and said, 'Here, take these.' So I went with both parts of my weapon fitted after all. It was the same with claymore mines, which we wanted as a deterrent to put the brakes on anyone trying to come after us in the desert. (If you're being followed, you can put down a mine with a timer, and crack it off after maybe five minutes. Even if it doesn't do any damage it slows people down, because they wonder if there are more mines in front of them.) When we asked for claymores, the answer was that there weren't any, and someone told us to make our own out of ammunition boxes packed with plastic explosives and gympi link � the metal belt that holds machine-gun rounds together. This was ridiculous: home-made devices like that are crude, large and heavy, and we hadn't got the capacity to carry them. Later we did make a single claymore out of plas�tic ice-cream cartons, and one of us took it in his bergen. In fact there was a whole tent full of claymores, but through lack of communication at various levels, they remained hid�den away. In the end we were given a mixed load of stuff by the Special Boat Squadron: five claymores, a box of L2 gre�nades, one of white phosphorus grenades and some 66 rockets. We shared out some of this with the other two patrols, and I myself finished up with one L2 grenade and two white phos. Yet another sore point was pistols. The twenty pistols packed and shipped for our own use simply disappeared, nicked for the other squadrons. The result was that the only Stand By . . . Stand By . . . Go!21 guy in